Oprah Doesn't Visit McGinty's
by Tracy Diane Miller
Summary: Summary: This very short story was inspired by "Home Groan."


Oprah Doesn't Visit McGinty's  
  
Summary: This very short story was inspired by "Home Groan."  
  
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whoever created them. No  
  
copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made.  
  
Author: Tracy Diane Miller  
  
Author's Note: Some of the dialogue that appears in this story is not my own but belongs to the writer of the Early Edition episode "Home Groan."  
  
E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com  
  
  
  
Oprah Doesn't Visit McGinty's  
  
He hurried across the street and walked the path towards his childhood home  
  
situated along the quiet and manicured cul-de-sac. He turned the knob and  
  
discovered that the door was unlocked.  
  
Why was the door still unlocked? Didn't he caution his parents about the  
  
two escaped convicts who were in Hickory? Mom and Dad needed to take his  
  
warning seriously. He realized that Dad was proud at having been re-elected  
  
as community leader and beamed excitedly talking about his "posse", but  
  
unless Dad's posse consisted of Ben, Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe, the Hobson  
  
posse was no match for these hardened criminals. Dad was inviting trouble  
  
with this penchant for unlocked doors. Hickory, Indiana (population 8,325)  
  
might possess a small town mentality reminiscent of the 1950s with those  
  
"hello neighbor smiles" and where time stood still, but the ugliness of  
  
crime had invaded Hickory like a cancer. Denial wasn't going to be an  
  
appropriate cure.  
  
"You really need to keep this door locked". He insisted as he entered the  
  
house. He was taken aback when he saw that the house was overflowing with  
  
people. The whole atmosphere reeked of a maternal machination. It couldn't  
  
be a coincidence that Mom's simple dinner invitation appeared more like a  
  
party.  
  
Everyone, neighbors that he had known while growing up, were happy to see  
  
him. He was their local boy turned big city success. At least, that was  
  
what everyone seemed to think. Mr. Bebo thought that he had a chain of  
  
restaurants in which he was thinking about going public. Mr. Bebo wanted to  
  
buy into the restaurants and interpreted his non-committal response as a  
  
fear that the SEC would discover his intentions so he wanted to keep things  
  
quiet. Others shared Mr. Bebo's desire to be a part of his "entrepreneurial  
  
empire". He left the maddening crowd in the other room. He ran into Mom  
  
coming down the stairs. He questioned her about why everyone assumed that he  
  
owned a chain of successful restaurants. At first, she acted like she had  
  
no idea. Finally, she admitted that she and Dad sometimes embellished  
  
things. Soon, intrusive and tight arms gripped around his waist and he  
  
found himself hoisted into the air. George seemed very happy to see him.  
  
George said that he planned on visiting Chicago. George wanted to know what  
  
night he should come to McGinty's to see Oprah. He flashed Mom an annoyed  
  
look. Mom didn't miss a beat when she told George that Oprah comes on  
  
Wednesdays.  
  
Oprah probably never even heard of McGinty's.  
  
Mom had been bragging about him for as long as he could remember. He  
  
remembered when he played a teapot in second grade. It was just a little  
  
school play, but Mom came with her camera and swelled with pride telling  
  
anyone within earshot about his role. Mom acted like she was attending the  
  
Academy Awards and he was one of the honored performers. Then there was the  
  
time when he first made varsity baseball. Mom behaved as if he had won the  
  
World Series. And when he was selected for the Rotary Scholarship, Mom took  
  
out a full page announcement in the local newspaper no doubt to supplement  
  
her verbal bragging. She told everyone about his scholarship. He had won a  
  
"Rotary" Scholarship not a "Rhodes" Scholarship and was going to attend the  
  
University of Chicago not Oxford University. Once, when he was sixteen  
  
years old, he even got up the nerve to ask Mom to stop bragging about him,  
  
telling her it was embarrassing. But Mom smiled at him before kissing him  
  
on the cheek and insisting that bragging about him made up for the morning  
  
sickness, stretch marks, labor and delivery pains, and midnight feedings and  
  
that the day that he could give birth to a baby would be the day that she  
  
would stop bragging about him. End of discussion.  
  
He hastily escaped from the frenzy downstairs by retreating to the sanctity  
  
of his bedroom. Time stood still there, too. His posters, his trophy, and  
  
his football phone adorned his room just as they had when he was a teenager.  
  
For a moment, he reflected on the happy, uncomplicated moments that he had  
  
spent in this room before he faced adult problems and responsibilities. But  
  
the reverie was fleeting. He pulled out The Paper and read the story about  
  
the two escaped convicts on their way to rob the bank. Just then he heard a  
  
knock on the door. Mom wanted him to come out of his bedroom because the  
  
Petersons wanted to see him.  
  
"Just a second, Mom." He promised even as he formulated another avenue of  
  
escape.  
  
The window. Perfect.  
  
He remembered once when he was grounded. He couldn't remember what he had  
  
done to deserve the punishment, but he did remember that he was seventeen  
  
years old and Mom and Dad told him that he couldn't go out. It was a  
  
Saturday night and he had a date with Genie. So, he waited until they had  
  
fallen asleep and he sneaked out of the house through his bedroom window.  
  
He and Genie had a wonderful date. And he would have gotten away with his  
  
deception except it was raining heavily by the time he returned home. He  
  
climbed back up to his window. The window was stuck. It took a while  
  
before he could get it open. When he finally succeeded, he didn't exactly  
  
enter through the window quietly. Instead, he fell into his room. The loud  
  
noise alerted Mom and Dad who rushed to his room.  
  
Oh Boy.  
  
There was no way he could explain his way out of trouble especially when  
  
they saw the opened window and the fact that he was soaked. Even his puppy  
  
dog look wouldn't work against their angered expressions. Consequently, he  
  
was grounded for three additional weeks for disobeying them.  
  
It seemed like deja-vu as he climbed out of the window. But he wasn't a kid  
  
anymore. He needed to reach the bank to prevent tragedy. It was all part  
  
of his life as the guy who got tomorrow's newspaper today.  
  
Tomorrow's newspaper today delivered by a cat. Wonder what Oprah would have  
  
to say about that?  
  
  
  
The End. 


End file.
